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Biography
Edward C. Garza is one of San Antonio's most-honored composers and one of its most prolific. During a three-year composer-in-residency, he wrote 17 works, including a mass, a ballet score, and several important compositions for the San Antonio Symphony. He has been the recipient of many awards, including the League of United Latin American Citizens Hispanic Heritage Recognition Award (1985) and the City of San Antonio "Emissary to the Muses" award in the same year; he received a 1982 - 1983 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts for his operas Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe and Clytemnestra; and his opera based on Chekhov's A Marriage Proposal received First Prize in the Brooklyn College Conservatory Awards of 1983.
Garza attended St. Mary's University in San Antonio (BME), the University of Texas at Austin (MFA), the Berlin Hochschule für Musik where he studied composition with Boris Blacher, and the University of Arizona at Tucson (DMA). He has taught at Southwest State University, Prima College of Tucson, the University of Arizona at Tucson, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Palo Alto College of San Antonio.
He was artistic director for the Theatre of the Performing Arts of Tucson, music director of the Arizona Ballet and Tucson Civic Ballet companies, as well as music director for KUAT National Public Radio of Tucson. He was an advisory panelist for the Arizona commission on the Arts, for the San Antonio Arts Review Panel, for the Texas Commission on the Arts, and for the American Orchestra Overview of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Dance Rhythms and Chants was written for Mexico's famous Quarteto Latino Americano and was premiered by them with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra in 1996. A remarkable recording of a live performance by the Quarteto and the Mexico City Symphony exists, but is not in release. Sometimes compared to the Concerto Grosso of Orbón, Garza's orchestration often succeeds where Orbón's fails: transparency of instrumentation and use of instrumental extremes assure that the quartet may be heard at all times; Orbón's orchestration, however beautiful, often muddles and obscures the quartet sound.
Five Mexican Paintings was inspired by the great traveling show of 3,000 years of Mexican art, called "Splendors." The first painting is Frida Kahlo's "Self-Portrait on the Border between Mexico and the United States" and uses themes from music of ancient Mexico interposed with a popular foxtrot from the '30s to portray the elements contained in Kahlo's imagery; the second, Rufino Tamayo's "The Flute Player" features rich orchestral colorations with exotic scale materials for solo flute, capturing the cubist/fauvist flavor of the art; next, Orozco's "Parade of the Zapatistas" is transcribed into martial music of ancient times, employing an actual marching song of the Zapatistas; "The Echo of a Scream" by Alfaro Siqueiros is the fourth painting, which shows a child crying in the devastated landscape. An anguished outcry from the orchestra opens the piece, followed by a lonely clarinet solo. The clarinet is joined by piccolo for a duet over a sustained bare orchestral backdrop. The final painting is Diego Rivera's "Day of the Dead in the City," a grotesque celebration of All Soul's Day. A Mexican hat dance gradually turns into a Dies Irae, evolving into a swirling Judgment Day; dancing skeletons represented by wooden percussion instruments bring this work to a thrilling close.
Homage to Narciso Martinez is Garza's tribute to "the Father of Tejano Music," who was also known as "The Hurricane of the Valley." Martinez lived from 1922 until 1993 and while a musical legend, made most of his income as an agricultural worker, working in his later years as an attendant at the Brownsville Zoo. The homage is actually a set of seven variations on a popular tune recorded in the 1940s by Martinez and his bajo sexto player, Santiago Almeida. Actually a Polish-style mazurka, The Love of Panchita is heard in its original recording at the beginning of the work; the percussion instruments gradually enter over the accordion, which fades away as an increasingly sophisticated series of variations is revealed. The second variation is a Polonaise, followed by a March; an adagietto passage called Ancient Chant is next, invoking music of early Mayan and Aztec influences. The fifth variation is set in more modern times and is a Square Dance; this evolves into the sixth variation, called Mexican Music Box, recalling the elaborate mechanical instruments of the last century. And the final variation, Polka del Valle, moves into a very affecting return of the original mazurka played by the full orchestra. Gradually the percussion paves the way for the return of the original recording of Narciso Martinez's beautiful and plaintive accordion, which slowly fades away.
There are no productions for this artist in the Season Schedule of Performances which currently only dates back to 1991.
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Artist Information
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